Great Ormond Street hospital issues apology to Baby P whistleblower

Paediatrician Kim Holt, who warned about shortfalls at the clinic where Baby P was treated, now works for another NHS trust

Three years after ignoring her warnings about St Anne's clinic in Haringey and suspending her, Great Ormond Street Hospital has issued a formal apology to consultant paediatrician Kim Holt. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
Frank Baron/Guardian

Great Ormond Street hospital has formally apologised to a senior doctor suspended after she blew the whistle on failings at the clinic where Baby Peter was treated just days before his death.

Consultant paediatrician Kim Holt and three colleagues wrote to managers in 2006, warning that understaffing and poor record keeping posed a serious risk to patients' safety at St Anne's clinic in Haringey, north London.

Holt says bosses ignored her warnings and removed her from the clinic.

Last year she said in an interview: "I believe that if our concerns had been taken seriously at the time we raised them, then we could have prevented the death of Baby Peter. Several of the failings found by the inquiries into his death were 100% the same as the failings we complained about the year before he died."

Peter Connelly was seen by an inexperienced locum doctor Sabah Al-Zayyat at St Anne's in the summer of 2007, three days before he was killed and some time after Holt and her fellow whistleblowers had left. Zayyat failed to spot signs that the 17-month-old boy, who was on Haringey's child protection register, had been physically abused.

Holt says the hospital offered her £120,000 to withdraw her complaints in the wake of Peter's death - a claim the hospital denied.

The apology, which was issued jointly by the hospital and Haringey primary care trust, says: "Both Trusts accept and are sorry that you have been through a difficult time. You are a respected and valued member of staff and we look forward to you resuming your role in community paediatrics very soon".

Holt, who has been on paid leave for much of the past three years, is now understood to have returned to work with a new NHS employer, Whittington hospital, also in north London.